“Avante porteirinhenses pela glória de Deus!”: espaço de sociabilidade e religiosidade na Porteirinha dos anos 1938 a 1959

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the existing relations between the Church and the society of Porteirinha, located in the extreme north of Minas-Gerais, from its emancipation, in 1938, after almost forty years of the advent of the Republic and the establishment of secularism in the country. Based on a critical analysis of historical documents produced mainly by the Catholic Church, as well as the methodological-theoretical use, with a view, above all, to the analysis of the speeches of the main social agents of that period, we sought to investigate the historical urban and social space, to understand how the Church, through the so-called Catholic Romanization process, has taken root in the most varied spheres of that sociability space, especially in religion, family, politics, influencing the city's civilizing process. The hypothesis that we believe to be viable to answer our questions is that, with the loss of symbolic power, the result of the secularization of society, the result of the emancipation of the Republic and the end of the Patronage, the Church, through its ecclesiastical representative, parish priest Julião Arroyo Gallo, articulates with the local power to civilize the conduct and behavior of individuals, as part of a hegemonic disposition of power. From these symbolic exchanges, the Church maintained its faithful, and as a consequence, the ruling power, had social control at its disposal, converging, finally, in reaching the aspirations of order of the political and religious fields, intended by the Government Getúlio Vargas and the Brazilian bishopric, through the leadership of the Catholic Church in Brazil.